Hot Zone (33 page)

Nick said slowly, “I protect you.”

“Yes, I know
that’s what Gabriel said, but what kind of dope just stands there when he can do something about it?”

Nick shrugged. My fury, arriving too late to help Meri, peaked. My teeth were gritted as I walked over to him. “Go home, Nick. You’re fired. Go back to Gabriel. Get out of here now!”

It always surprised me when I commanded something and the person actually did it. It certainly didn’t happen much—I wasn’t really the type to order people around, and even when I gave it a shot, it only worked about half the time. I had better results when I was angry. And I was very angry tonight.

Nick didn’t say anything more, just walked away, everyone’s eyes on him. He went out the front door, and soon we heard a car start up, then fade as he drove off. Most of the people turned to me, some a little warily.

Meri said in her soft but carrying voice, “Go on now, everything is fine.” Several people looked at each other, and they began to look embarrassed. Meri gave anyone who hung around a hard look, and the person inevitably looked at the floor or turned and walked off. Soon we were alone.

I was shaking in reaction, but I went to Meri and tried to see if she was all right. She was looking at Tucker. “Did you touch her skin?”

I felt like I’d missed something. “What?” I turned to Tucker. He was looking at his hands. He showed them to me, putting them out wordlessly, his eyes shocked. Both of his hands were bright red, as if they’d been burned. I heard a noise behind me and saw Hoover growling at Karen, her fur up on her back.

Meri was examining her wrist where Karen had twisted it. It was covered with red marks that were striped in places and full red in others. I gave up trying to understand what was happening. “Your wrist—do you think it’s broken?”

Meri shrugged tightly. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it burns.” Her breathing was getting faster. “It really burns!” She gave a panicked look at Tucker, who also looked like he was in pain.

All I could think of was to help them feel better, and I knew you put burns under cold water to help with pain, so I said, “Cold water. Come on!” And I don’t know if I rolled them, or if they were just ready to follow any suggestion at that time, but they both followed me as I bolted towards the kitchen. As fast as I could I shoved the water over to cold and pushed the lever back and on—medium force. I stepped to the side and then realized that they both couldn’t get their burned hands under the faucet at once. I pulled up the sprayer and moved to the other sink, holding up the sprayer like I was ready to shoot someone.

Of course Tucker let Meri in, and she shoved her wrist under the cooling water. Her face almost immediately began to ease. Tucker came over to me, and I gently sprayed his hands. The water that ran off their skin had an odd oily cast to it that pearled up in the water as it went down the drain.

Tucker hadn’t seen it; he was breathing slowly and closing his eyes as the burning began to dissipate. I had an odd feeling and went with it. “Make sure you get every part. And I think you might believe I’m nuts, but if you can stand it we should wash your burns.”

Neither one looked at all excited about this idea. I quickly plugged the sink and squirted some dish soap in it. I knew dish soap was fairly mild, and I had the feeling we needed to move quickly. Tucker didn’t balk, but put his hands in the cold soapy water. He gingerly tried to wash them against each other and took them out. I sprayed them with the sprayer.

“Meri, do it. It helps.” He said to Meri, who was leaking tears at the pain. Meri was sort of a baby about pain at the best of times, and she shook her head when I tried to get her to put her arm in the water, fearing it would hurt more. Finally I couldn’t stand it.

“Look at me!” I said in a louder-than-usual voice. “Meri, put your arm in there!”

She leaned over and dunked her arm in, not seeming to care that she put it in all the way to the elbow, soaking her shirt. She looked at the water and then at me. “How did you do that?” she asked, her eyes wide.

I ignored her, carefully reaching my hands in, as gently as I could, to make sure her arm was as clean as it could be.

I looked back to see our wild dash and immersion had again drawn several interested observers. I picked one out at random. “Mark, do you have a cell? Call the clinic—find out who’s on tonight.”

Meri had taken my suggestion on rounding up anyone with medical knowledge to heart, working even more feverishly when Jacob had gotten sick. We all knew this was a priority. We’d been lucky. Cannon Hills, another town close by, had pulled in with us on this, and between the two of us we had four nurses/paramedics and one doctor. We had let them set up their own schedule at the clinic with the idea that someone always had to be available.

Mark had to ask someone for the number but he was soon on the phone. I had taken towels and very carefully wrapped them loosely around the burns. Tucker’s were beginning to blister, but Meri’s didn’t look quite as bad.

Mark said, pulling the cell away from his face, “Alan is there. He says he’s the only one. We need to go there.” He put his ear back to the phone. “Wait a second. He’s going to see if Carla Phillips is available. She lives close to here.” Carla Phillips was turning out to be an amazing resource. Our doctor had been a psychiatrist, and had very little emergency experience. He was very quiet and thoughtful, and often twitchy. I had no idea if this was something that had developed since the bombs or whether he’d always been sort of neurotic looking. In any case, Carla had worked in a busy emergency room in Chicago for 35 years before she moved here to the sleepier world of rural Minnesota to finish out her working years as a public health nurse. No matter what the chain of command was supposed to be for doctors and nurses, no one questioned that Mrs. Carla Phillips was in charge.

Mark hung up. “He’ll call me right back.” Several people were voicing opinions—aloe, butter, bandages. I was running out of ideas and didn’t know what to do now. Mark’s phone rang, playing a happy little Disney-type tune. “Hello?” he said. “Yes.” He nodded at us. What did that mean? Yes what? “Great,” he said and pushed the ‘end’ button. “She’s on her way. She says just keep them quiet, and you can run more water on them unless they’re bleeding or very severe.”

Meri was just standing where I’d put her, seeming too shocked to move. I asked everyone to go downstairs and give Tucker and Meri some privacy. Most ended up going to bed, but a couple went downstairs to the slightly smaller TV. I sat Meri down, and Tucker and I peeked in on Karen, who was still out of commission. Hoover was watching her carefully. Whether it was right or not, I was starting to think that Hoover understood most if not everything I said. I had stopped talking to her like she was just a dopey dog and started talking to her more like a person. Sometimes I even swear she nodded. Okay, maybe I was a little nuts on that one. “Hoover, watch her, and bark really loud if she wakes up, okay?”

Hoover chuffed. I think for her this was yes. Or she had a stuffy nose.

Tucker slanted me a look but didn’t say anything obvious, like,
uh, you’re talking to a dog, you know
. I appreciated his restraint.

I suddenly realized my boyfriend was hurting. I’d been so focused on dealing with the problem I couldn’t think of anything else. I carefully wound my arms around his waist, avoiding his hands. He didn’t touch me, but kissed my head and rubbed his jaw against my hair. “Tucker? What was that?”

We went over to where Meri was looking vacantly out into space. Tucker gestured to her with one reddened hand. “Is she all right?”

I went over and rubbed her back gently. “Mair? Are you okay sweetie?” No response. I looked worriedly at Tucker. “I wish Phil was here.”

Phil had gone to help a friend in another town. She wouldn’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.

We both jumped at the knock on the door. We didn’t even have a chance to stand up, much less answer it when Carla Phillips came striding in. “Who’s hurt?” she asked in her businesslike manner.

She saw Tucker’s hands and clucked her tongue. “What did you do?” she asked, coming close to peer at the burns. She pulled out rubber gloves and snapped them on. Carefully, she touched the burned area, and Tucker drew in his breath at the pain. “How in the world did you get a chemical burn?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure you’ll believe this, but it seems like they got it from her.” I pointed into the screened-in porch.

Carla shook her head. “Tucker—you’re Tucker, right? Dale’s brother?” Tucker nodded. “I want you to go and keep rinsing those hands with tepid water. Not hot nor cold. She pointed at me. “You help him get started and then come back.”

We went back to the kitchen. I got him set up and went back to where Mrs. Phillips was in the screened-in porch leaning over the unconscious Karen. She lifted Karen’s hands and examined them closely. She lifted Karen’s eyelids and listened to her pulse. She came back, shaking her head.

“You know, Madeline, I keep thinking I’ve seen it all, then I see something else that stuns me.” She pointed at Karen. “Best I can figure, your friend there—that’s Karen, isn’t it? Has developed a sort of defense system that exudes a caustic chemical. It’s still on her hands, but she has no burns, so it isn’t toxic to her.” Carla took off the rubber gloves, which were smoking slightly. “See?” She tossed them in the garbage. “Be careful not to touch your friend until she showers. I assume she doesn’t have that chemical on her all the time. If she does, no one should touch her. And she’s also going to spend a lot of time naked, since it burned away the fabric on her wrists.” She shot me an even look. “By the way, you’d be best off burning all of the things we have used or that she’s touched. The couch out there will have to go.”

“Now, this is Meredith, correct?” She carefully examined Meri, who continued to just stare into space. “Except for the burns, there isn’t anything physically wrong with her that I can see. You said the girl in there twisted her wrist?”

I nodded.

“Yes, it’s swollen. Go on into the pharmacy, door is broken anyway, and get a splint for wrists. I doubt it’s broken, but if it still hurts as much in a few days as it does now, come on in and we’ll x-ray it.” Carla turned back to Meri and considered her. She clapped her hands suddenly and loudly in front of her face, and Meri jumped, her eyes coming into focus.

“Hello and welcome back, Meredith,” Carla said a little dryly. “Now, go on in the bathroom and take off your shirt or anything else Karen in there might have touched, and put the clothes in a pile. Then get in the shower and take a nice tepid shower for at least fifteen minutes. Be very careful not to scrub anywhere she touched or you will scrub the skin right off.” She turned to me. “You get her clothes, and Tucker’s as well, and put them with the sofa to be burned.” She snapped her bag shut. “Do you have an aloe plant?”

I shook my head.

She sighed. “Better get one. Unless that Gabriel gets supplies moving soon, we’re back a hundred years where medications are concerned. I have a plant at home. You can plant one of the leaves. Until then, see if you have any burn ointment about. If the area is dry, you can use it, if the area is wet—blistered or oozing—just try to keep it dry or loosely bandaged. I’m on at the clinic tomorrow. Come on in and I’ll re-check the burns. You can give them pain relievers if they want them.”

With that, Mrs. Phillips stood and walked out of the door. Meri and I blinked at each other. Meri said in a deeply confused voice, “When did Mrs. Phillips get here?”

“Go take a shower, and then we’ll talk.” Still dazed, Meri walked slowly to the bathroom.

I saw Mark coming up from the downstairs TV area and welcomed the interruption. “Hey Mark. Did you used to be a biologist?”

“Sort of—why?” Mark was a quiet guy who seemed to me like he didn’t understand how to relate to people. He was 40ish and had lost his wife and twin daughters to the aftermath of the bombs. He’d been so depressed a neighbor had brought him here to live, so we could keep an eye on him.

“Well, I was wondering. Would it be possible for someone to have something that didn’t hurt them, but did hurt other people?”

He looked confused. I tried again, dropping the pretense of theory. “Okay, it seems Karen somehow has something on her skin that isn’t burning her, but that did burn Meri and Tucker.” At the mention of Tucker, I realized he was waiting for me to return. “Crap!” I rushed out and checked on him in the kitchen. He wanted to quit the whole flushing thing, and turned off the water. I helped him carefully dry his hands, dabbing them carefully, then tossing the towels we’d used in the “to burn” pile.

We sat down and talked about how it could be possible for Karen to have some chemical injurious to others that she exuded when angry. We thought maybe she had it all the time now, but Tucker believed whatever her body had done had exhausted her to the point she collapsed. It made sense. As much sense as anything made these days.

Meri came out, damp from her shower and wrapped in a fuzzy robe. She kept her arm cradled close to her chest. “Do you want to go to the medical center tonight?” I asked her.

“No, I’ll be okay,” she said quietly.

“Speaking of being okay, Meri, what was going on when you were just staring? You didn’t seem to see or hear any of us.”

Tucker asked, “Were you having another astral projection?”

“Whoa, what? Astral projection?” I said, looking at Tucker.

“Didn’t she tell you? I thought you two talked about this. You’re the one who told me,” Tucker said.

“Astral projection? Hardly. She told me she had a couple blackouts, and that’s it.”

Meri said quietly. “Tucker, Phil and I talked about it some when you were helping Jacob. I don’t know if it’s astral projection, since I seem to stay firmly grounded in this reality and not wander on some astral plane.” She rolled her eyes. I wondered for a moment whether any of us should be considering any idea silly at this point. She continued. “When I really thought about it, it did seem like I was traveling without my body. I know that sounds ridiculous.”